Lisssn

In the past, I've extolled Knut Müller's Rhem series while criticizing the sound/plot/graphics that nearly topple the games into the thumbs-down bin. Their world and puzzle designs are so strong, so inspired, that they overcome their numerous shortcomings. Unfortunately, Lisssn is not likewise redeemed. It focuses on primitive sound and music puzzles many of which are far more basic than you'd expect in a game that celebrates Classical music's masters. Nonetheless, most require multiple consecutive solves to prove that you've grokked that simplicity. So you're left with the same Knut faults, some even more explicit, without the same beauty of complicated puzzle exploration and discovery to pull the experience out of the abyss -- an abyss plagued by an unexplained race of cartoon guide aliens to truly muddle the tone. Nostalgia for Rhem and other Myst-clones prodded me reluctantly through the finish line, and there are, along the way, brief moments of fun even for those not in the target demographic: the music-unlearned and the Myst-inexperienced. The result is the worst game of Knut's I've played. At least it's short, so the Myst-obsessed with endless forgiveness for lack of…

Lisssn is a very mediocre point and click adventure game reminscient of MYST (in fact the developers openly admit they were trying to rip off RHEM). The first thing you'll notice about this game is that it looks like it was made in 1998, but, believe it or not, this was published in 2018. Did they start development in 1998 and it just took this long to launch? I can't think of any other reason why a game that looks and plays this bad and clunky could have been released last decade. Anyway the interface for the game is a mess, you just move between static screens by clicking with your mouse... definitely a game designed for the newfangled "Multimedia" crowd and their brand new CD-ROMs. The idea is that you solve audio related puzzles to find a magic flute or something... who knows, look, the presentation of this game is so bad by 2018 standards it's no wonder people never got into it (see the player stats below). From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of you…

Really unique ideas for an adventure game, this was exactly what I was looking for. It's not all sound-based, I think the non-sound puzzles are alright (at worst a bit confusing until you poke around enough, the first room is a really bad example of this) but the actual sound puzzles I mostly enjoyed. There's good ideas, but this is definitely more a recommendation for adventure game lovers and music puzzle enjoyers. These days headphones are so common, but there's still a kind of accessibility issue with requiring stereo. The first stereo puzzle is a bit murky with very short cues, but the other stereo puzzles I felt like were still possibly solvable in mono and otherwise were made more interesting by the use of stereo. Remember this is an old game with no autosave. The game crashed for me while doing the crystal gate puzzle.

lisssn — A Wonderful Puzzle Game That Wears Its Rough Edges Proudly Let’s get the gripes out of the way first. lisssn has a few design flaws that are hard to ignore. The interface can feel a little unintuitive in places, and there are moments where the game doesn’t communicate its logic as clearly as it could — leaving you stuck not because a puzzle is hard, but because you’re unsure what the game is even asking of you. Navigation occasionally feels clunky, and some of the visual feedback could be sharper. But here’s the thing: none of that really matters once the game gets its hooks in you. lisssn is, quite simply, a great puzzle game. And what shines through more than anything else is the love behind it. You can feel, in every carefully constructed challenge, that the people who made this game are genuinely passionate about puzzles — not as a mechanic, but as an art form. There’s a thoughtfulness to the design that only comes from people who have spent years thinking deeply about what makes a puzzle good. These are puzzle lovers making a game for puzzle lovers, and it shows in every layer. The puzzles themselves are genuinely logical — satisfying in the way that only well-designe…

Wonderful little piece. Go Knut!

A game in the vein of Rhem or Myst which uses audio cues. I played it once and got stuck, but the game definitely has merit, so I recommend it to fans of the genre.